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RENAME(2) System Calls Manual RENAME(2)

NAME

rename —
change the name of a file

LIBRARY

Standard C Library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

#include <stdio.h>

int
rename(const char *from, const char *to);

int
renameat(int fromfd, const char *from, int tofd, const char *to);

DESCRIPTION

The rename() system call causes the link named from to be renamed as to. If to exists, it is first removed. Both from and to must be of the same type (that is, both directories or both non-directories), and must reside on the same file system.

The rename() system call guarantees that if to already exists, an instance of to will always exist, even if the system should crash in the middle of the operation.

If the final component of from is a symbolic link, the symbolic link is renamed, not the file or directory to which it points.

The renameat() system call is equivalent to rename() except in the case where either from or to specifies a relative path. If from is a relative path, the file to be renamed is located relative to the directory associated with the file descriptor fromfd instead of the current working directory. If the to is a relative path, the same happens only relative to the directory associated with tofd. If the renameat() is passed the special value AT_FDCWD in the fromfd or tofd parameter, the current working directory is used in the determination of the file for the respective path parameter.

RETURN VALUES

The rename() function returns the value 0 if successful; otherwise the value -1 is returned and the global variable errno is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

The rename() system call will fail and neither of the argument files will be affected if:
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A component of either pathname exceeded 255 characters, or the entire length of either path name exceeded 1023 characters.
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A component of the from path does not exist, or a path prefix of to does not exist.
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A component of either path prefix denies search permission.
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The requested link requires writing in a directory with a mode that denies write permission.
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The directory pointed at by the from argument denies write permission, and the operation would move it to another parent directory.
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The file pointed at by the from argument has its immutable, undeletable or append-only flag set, see the chflags(2) manual page for more information.
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The parent directory of the file pointed at by the from argument has its immutable or append-only flag set.
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The parent directory of the file pointed at by the to argument has its immutable flag set.
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The directory containing from is marked sticky, and neither the containing directory nor from are owned by the effective user ID.
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The file pointed at by the to argument exists, the directory containing to is marked sticky, and neither the containing directory nor to are owned by the effective user ID.
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Too many symbolic links were encountered in translating either pathname.
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A component of either path prefix is not a directory.
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The from argument is a directory, but to is not a directory.
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The to argument is a directory, but from is not a directory.
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The link named by to and the file named by from are on different logical devices (file systems). Note that this error code will not be returned if the implementation permits cross-device links.
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The directory in which the entry for the new name is being placed cannot be extended because there is no space left on the file system containing the directory.
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The directory in which the entry for the new name is being placed cannot be extended because the user's quota of disk blocks on the file system containing the directory has been exhausted.
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An I/O error occurred while making or updating a directory entry.
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The requested link requires writing in a directory on a read-only file system.
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Path points outside the process's allocated address space.
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The from argument is a parent directory of to, or an attempt is made to rename ‘.’ or ‘..’.
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The to argument is a directory and is not empty.

In addition to the errors returned by the rename(), the renameat() may fail if:

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The from argument does not specify an absolute path and the fromfd argument is neither AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching, or the to argument does not specify an absolute path and the tofd argument is neither AT_FDCWD nor a valid file descriptor open for searching.
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The from argument is not an absolute path and fromfd is neither AT_FDCWD nor a file descriptor associated with a directory, or the to argument is not an absolute path and tofd is neither AT_FDCWD nor a file descriptor associated with a directory.

SEE ALSO

chflags(2), open(2), symlink(7)

STANDARDS

The rename() system call is expected to conform to ISO/IEC 9945-1:1996 (“POSIX.1”). The renameat() system call follows The Open Group Extended API Set 2 specification.

HISTORY

The renameat() system call appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.
April 10, 2008 Linux 4.9.0-9-amd64